Unless otherwise indicated herein, the materials described in this section are not prior art to the claims in this application and are not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
A population of stem cells, satellite stem cells (“SSCs”), naturally resides within adult skeletal muscle. These cells expand and differentiate in response to injury, maintaining the reparative and regenerative capacity of skeletal muscle. For example, one function of these cells is to repair minor damage to skeletal muscle from minor injuries and trauma. However, once an injury becomes too great, the satellite cells may fail to perform their function properly and scar tissue may develop. A limitation that leads to the failure of studies using SSCs for muscle regeneration is inadequate delivery and engraftment of the satellite cells into defective muscle tissue. Current approaches using nanofiber-based scaffolds as stem cell delivery vehicles suffer from various limitations, including unaligned fiber accumulation and/or collection of nanofibers directly onto a flat 2D surface, which limits application to in vivo systems.